When Daniel's partner had a rupture during childbirth, she was transferred to an emergency theatre. Dressed in scrubs and clinical masks, medical staff began asking Daniel medical questions and to hold equipment.
"After a while of looking confused at them, they ended up moving me away from my wife and I had to stand in the corner of the room," he said.
This is a surprisingly common experience in hospital theatre where there can be multiple people - including doctors, nurses, radiographers, students, medical reps and sometimes partners - dressed head to toe in the same scrubs, with only their eyes visible. This can lead to confusion and delays when each second is critical.
Andrew Stevenson, consultant orthopedic surgeon at Musgrove Park Hospital in Somerset, told The i Paper: "One of the things several midwives said to me is that when birthing partners are in the operating room they get put in the same scrubs and there's countless times when they've been asked to do a medical task.
"Imagine there's blood everywhere and they're worried about the safety of their baby and partner and then someone asks you to take the rubbish out."
Stevenson, who is the sustainable lead at the Royal College of Surgeons, said that in the three orthopedic theatres in his hospital they use 90,000 single-use hats (which cost approximately 18p) a year.
"It's nuts," he said. "We literally wear them for a day and throw them away."
Former nurse, Danielle Checketts, has created a surprisingly simple solution: washable name and job title badges that clip onto reusable surgical hats.
Not only will it improve patient safety, but by ditching disposable headgear the low-tech invention could save the NHS an estimated £16.2m a year and reduce landfill waste it is estimated based.
It comes after Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, said this month's doctor strike would cost around £240 million.
As well as the strike, Streeting has also warned the NHS faces a "tough and long" winter.
Checketts came up with the idea of Eco Ninjas' theatre badge hats after training. She told The i Paper: "As a student nurse on my first day, people asked 'can you get this? Can you do this?'
"People just assumed I was full-time staff and not there to learn. It was very daunting."
There's one story that stays with her. A neonatal ward manager was in theatre when a baby's heart stopped.
She said: "They were resuscitating the baby and the person in front of her put his thumbs up to say, 'is the baby going to make it?' She put her thumbs down to say 'no' thinking it was a member of staff. But it was the dad. She was horrified when she learned about it."
Being easily identifiable also helps flatten hierarchies in theatres. Students on rotation or newer members of staff who don't know other clinicians by name may not feel as able to speak up if they notice something is wrong.
Stevenson said: "Suddenly it means you're all the same, you're all people in the room wearing the names."
Knowing who is treating you also reassures patients who are in a vulnerable position and it's useful after the operation to know who cared for you.
When Checketts had a C-section, her surgeon and anesthetist introduced themselves before the operation when they were in their own clothes.
She said: "But when we were in the room I was like well who are they? The anxiety when you're so vulnerable and scared and everybody is just nameless and in scrubs."
Since Covid, clinicians would sometimes scribble their name on a cap before a shift starts but Stevenson said this was "very ad hoc".
He said: "It's nuts when you think of all the other high pressure environments, pilots have their names on their jackets, police the same, fire service the same.
Checketts wants to get the eco caps rolled out across the NHS to shift away from "throwaway culture". Two other Trusts are interested in the product.
"We have a mountain to climb persuading individual NHS trusts, each a large bureaucratic organisation with complex procurement processes, to embrace this change," she said.